You set this up.

You dragged my mother into it just to humiliate my household.”

I glanced over at Darla.

Her knuckles sat pale and steady on the black steering wheel at ten and two, her eyes fixed on the dotted white lines of the highway.

She didn’t speed up, and her foot never wavered on the gas.

“Your mother is seventy-two years old, Rory,” I said into the phone, weighing each word so it came out flat and clear.

“She pays her own property taxes, and she makes up her own mind.”